Stream 720p youtube on ibook G4

So I have discovered how to stream (yes, I said stream) 720p youtube on an ibook G4, 1.2 ghz, 1.2 GB of RAM, 32 MB VRAM. Apologies in advance if someone else has already done this and posted.

First, grab Tenfourfox 6 or beta of 7. Then install Flashblock and Flashvideoreplacer extensions. Installing flashblock is critical as it blocks other flash from running in the background and chewing up CPU cycles. You will need ALL of your lowly G4's 1.2Ghz for this to work. You also need CorePlayer. Its 20 bucks, but if you have a PPC mac you owe it to yourself to download it and fork over the moola.

Flashvideoreplacer tries to replace flash on youtube and some other sites with quicktime. On Linux it works great, but on the mac it's uber buggy, works sometimes and not others, embedded doesn't work at all now, window mode does but only in low resolution so its not a good solution, but we won't be using it as is, but you do need it. There will be a small button at the far right of the address bar, where you can select preferences, and critically, copy URL.

In the flashvideoreplacer preferences select copy url to clipboard, then open CorePlayer, and paste that URL into it, command U brings up the copy URL window. Hit return and be amazed. On my ibook there is a teeny weeny bit of lag but its not THAT bad. And I confirmed it was truly 720p that was streaming. WOW.

Now if someone would automate this whole process we'd be set. For a bit.

In the flashvideoreplacer preferences select copy url to clipboard, then open CorePlayer, and paste that URL into it, command U brings up the copy URL window. Hit return and be amazed. On my ibook there is a teeny weeny bit of lag but its not THAT bad. And I confirmed it was truly 720p that was streaming. WOW.

So I have discovered how to stream (yes, I said stream) 720p youtube on an ibook G4, 1.2 ghz, 1.2 GB of RAM, 32 MB VRAM. Apologies in advance if someone else has already done this and posted.

First, grab Tenfourfox 6 or beta of 7. Then install Flashblock and Flashvideoreplacer extensions. Installing flashblock is critical as it blocks other flash from running in the background and chewing up CPU cycles. You will need ALL of your lowly G4's 1.2Ghz for this to work. You also need CorePlayer. Its 20 bucks, but if you have a PPC mac you owe it to yourself to download it and fork over the moola.

Flashvideoreplacer tries to replace flash on youtube and some other sites with quicktime. On Linux it works great, but on the mac it's uber buggy, works sometimes and not others, embedded doesn't work at all now, window mode does but only in low resolution so its not a good solution, but we won't be using it as is, but you do need it. There will be a small button at the far right of the address bar, where you can select preferences, and critically, copy URL.

In the flashvideoreplacer preferences select copy url to clipboard, then open CorePlayer, and paste that URL into it, command U brings up the copy URL window. Hit return and be amazed. On my ibook there is a teeny weeny bit of lag but its not THAT bad. And I confirmed it was truly 720p that was streaming. WOW.

Now if someone would automate this whole process we'd be set. For a bit.

Wow, mobihand (makers of CorePlayer) sure don't make it easy to find, I tried like hell to find it on their website and couldn't pull it up. I hope they still sell it. This is a saved link from when I bought it a year ago. They are sitting on a gold mine (ok, maybe a silver or tin mine) with CorePlayer, but they seem to have bet the farm on the mobile space.

I do believe this gets around the youtube url pasting problem, as it is not the URL of the webpage, but the URL of the stream, which flashvideoreplacer can "see". Sorry for my lack of technical terminology or knowledge, I am not a programmer, just a twenty five year mac end user who is bound and determined to get every inch of life out of his PPC macs before he jumps ship to Linux. Intel macs? Meh.

...your method and my method seem to do exactly the same thing. Now we just need someone with some programming skillz to make a Tenfourfox extension or build it into Youview or Mactubes. Of course CorePlayer is proprietary software so that is probably not going to happen.

Now we just need someone with some programming skillz to make a Tenfourfox extension or build it into Youview or Mactubes. Of course CorePlayer is proprietary software so that is probably not going to happen.

Click to expand...

Maybe we could find a way. I mean, I don't see any copyright infringement in (for instance) adding a button in MacTubes that would auto open a video file while downloading it. The other part could just be to select CorePlayer as the main player for all video formats (in CorePlayer's preferences panel).

Somebody could just make a firefox pluging (or an app) that extracts youtube's (or any flash) video url and makes a download button with it, a button that would also open the file automatically. If the download managing is done the same way as in MacTubes, it would allow you to watch the file in CorePlayer while it is downloading.

...is working on a haxie in tenfourfox that hands some, emphasis on some webvideo off to quicktime. I think this would be a somewhat minor task for someone of his prodigious coding ability. He has stated on the development blog for 10.4.Fx that he is definitely intrigued by the possibilities of CorePlayer, but he is also busy man. I also don't want to slow down his work on tenfourfox or classilla, both of which I use daily. Hopefully another gifted coder will read these posts and get busy.

I've noticed not ALL 720p will play for me via this method, the encoded bitrate also has to be low enough. This same method works to hand off *most* flash streams to VLC and Quicktime, BTW. I can still download and watch 720p in coreplayer so I am not too bothered, its probably a lot to ask of a ibook to stream and play 720p. I mean, 480p is just fine by me most of the time anyways.

In 10.4.Fx, Flashvideoreplacer puts a extension control button on the far right of the address bar. When you are on a page with flash content clicking on it will bring up a menu for preferences, download and copy url to clipboard options. I pass my cursor over the copy url to clipboard and highlight and release the submenu, which usually says something simple like "youtube.flv" or the like. This copies the stream's url to the clipboard, usally a twenty line thing that looks like this:

That is a 720p Lady Gaga concert video (not a fan, just the first HD video I came across) that streamed just fine in CorePlayer on my ibook G4 a few minutes ago, once nothing else was going on in the background. Seriously this uses up 96% of cpu cylces, so it will not work if your processor is doing anything else. But with a dual processor MDD like yours....I shudder to think of what its capable of.

Also this method does not work with vimeo. But you can download from vimeo easily, or play vimeo videos in the new window mode in flashvideoreplacer. Vimeo plays fine in quicktime though the video will not scale. The copy url method also works with some other flash streaming sites that flashvideoreplacer supports. Visit the developer's page to find out more.

I tried you trick with the video you posted up above (planets...). It works, but it lags badly! I mean, I don't even get 100% speed playback on benchmark mode with CorePlayer. I tested it on my laptop (G4 1.67 ghz). The video with lady gaga doens't work at all.

I've read "cache" in the url... looks like those are cache files, not genuine urls, maybe thats where the trouble comes from.

Any thoughts on this?

For me the best way is still download with MacTubes. Wish we get to find a better way, lets keep on searching!

I am a little perplexed why it doesn't work for you, my ibook has far lower specs than yours, and it still works fine for me today. Can you post a link that you've copied here and I'll see if it plays for me? I am running Tiger, though I don't see that could make a huge difference. It is also important to not have much going on in the background.

Saw your post on tenfourfox development, hope someone picks up your idea and runs with it. Wish I could code....

Just noticed the latest version of MacTubes has a "copy url" function in the download page, and those urls work great in CorePlayer. So you can either do the trick I told earlier (if you want to keep the video), or start the HD download, stop download, right click "copy url", watch.

You can also use the "show files" function. Right click on a video in the list, select "download"--->"show files"--->right click on the file format you want and select "copy url". Command+U in CorePlayer and paste.

Thanks, will look at that url option in mactubes next time I boot up the ibook (opened my dual core dell latitude 620 with Linux Mint 10 and I gotta say its hard to go back to a single processor). Cameron just posted that he has some "tenfourfox specific improvements for 8.01", I hope that includes taking code from flashvideoreplacer and putting it into his Quicktime enabler, that would awesome if he could get that to work.

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